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Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

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Re: Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

#41
It’s interesting that these models are both massively expensive to produce and self-contained to a degree that you can distribute the end product in a torrent.

This has not been the case for most commercial software for the past 20 years, during the cloud era. If you could steal a dump of random Facebook source code, it would be 99% useless because it’s so closely tied to the infrastructure. There’s almost nothing you could usefully run on your own PC or server VM.

But these ML models are like neutron stars of computation density. You can’t really peek inside to see what’s going on either. An unknown stolen model’s properties would need to be discovered by experimentation.

Re: Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

#43
post #4

What's the point of the form if it's freely accessible? This might be revolutionary in the LLM field, as Stable Diffusion was to DALL-E.

[flagged]

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion — the first and last names are not uncommon, and the GitHub user has some attributes (eg Haskell; geographic ties) they do not share with the LinkedIn profile you link.

Unless you have strong evidence of their identity I’d suggest rethinking this.

Re: Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

#44
post #4

What's the point of the form if it's freely accessible? This might be revolutionary in the LLM field, as Stable Diffusion was to DALL-E.

[flagged]

The Christopher King user who submitted the pull request has a git repo in C++ called “Final - My Homework” made in 2015; the Christopher King you link to completed his BA in Computer Science in 2005. I strongly suspect they’re different people who happen to share the same name.

Re: Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

#45
post #41

It’s interesting that these models are both massively expensive to produce and self-contained to a degree that you can distribute the end product in a torrent. This has not been the case for most commercial software for the past 20 years, during the cloud era. If you could steal a dump of random Facebook source code, it would be 99% useless because it’s so closely tied to the infrastructure. There’s almost nothing yo…

> massively expensive to produce and self-contained to a degree that you can distribute the end product in a torrent.

So, like movies or software

Re: Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

#47
post #30
post #16

In case it's not clear what's happening here (and from the comments it doesn't seem like it is), someone (not Meta) leaked the models and had the brilliant idea of advertising the magnet link through a GitHub pull request. The part about saving bandwidth is a joke. Meta employees may have not noticed or are still figuring out how to react, so the PR is still up. (Disclaimer: I work at Meta, but have no relationship w…

It's not even clear someone has leaked the models. A random person has put a download link on a PR, it could be anything.

HN user (with >3k) karma seems to confirm the leak. Take it for what it's worth.

Re: Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

#49
post #45
post #41

It’s interesting that these models are both massively expensive to produce and self-contained to a degree that you can distribute the end product in a torrent. This has not been the case for most commercial software for the past 20 years, during the cloud era. If you could steal a dump of random Facebook source code, it would be 99% useless because it’s so closely tied to the infrastructure. There’s almost nothing yo…

> massively expensive to produce and self-contained to a degree that you can distribute the end product in a torrent. So, like movies or software

Or Microsoft Office...

Re: Facebook LLAMA is being openly distributed via torrents

#50

Are there any official checksums available? I'm happy to see this, even if it's an unsanctioned stunt, because I think it's really pathetic of meta to want to gatekeep their "open" model. But ML models generally can execute arbitrary code, I'd want to make sure it's the real version at least.

    But ML models generally can execute arbitrary code
Is it the case if we're only talking about weights? I thought the rest is actually "open".
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